Redditors Collaborate on a Print Magazine That Analyzes the Rise and Fall of Memes

In mid-November, a satirical post depicting the cover of an imaginary magazine called Meme Insider rose to the top of one of Reddit’s most influential meme communities. A few months later, a small group of redditors were selling print copies of a real, professionally stylized, monthly magazine—with designers, an editorial staff, and their very own post on the Reddit Blog.

We love a good story of redditors collaborating on creative projects—whether it’s an international team of hyperloop enthusiasts or a supergroup of gif-makers—so we caught up with the creator of Meme Insider and a few members of their executive team to find out how it all came together and what’s in store for the future of this redditor-made magazine.

“Shitposting gone too far”

The story of Meme Insider begins with a user named Alex, who goes by u/DigitalizedOrange on Reddit.

“Before Meme Insider, I wasn’t very active on Reddit,” Alex writes. “I mostly viewed the default subreddits and rarely gave any input.”

There was one less common subreddit where he liked to lurk, however: r/MemeEconomy, a relatively new community on Reddit that bills itself as “a place where individuals can buy, sell, share, make, and invest in memes freely.”

On a given day, typical posts in r/MemeEconomy may include encouragements to “buy” new memes that are starting to become popular in other subreddits, requests for “appraisals” of meme formats that have an uncertain future, and alerts when a meme has become “normified.” While the language of the subreddit may have a learning curve, the underlying premise is simple: memes are a fickle business with ups and downs that users can track just like a stock market.

Alex’s first post to r/MemeEconomy took a slightly different approach. Instead of sharing his commentary on one particular meme format, he imagined a more comprehensive approach to meme analysis.

“I had nothing to do one night, so I decided I would make a joke magazine cover for r/MemeEconomy,” he says. “I had no idea the post would actually go anywhere.”

Despite the fact that this was u/DigitalizedOrange’s first post on Reddit and the first post of its kind on r/MemeEconomy, the response was overwhelmingly positive, earning over 6,000 upvotes and several requests for him to create an actual, full-fledged magazine.

By the end of the day, Alex resolved to develop the cover into an experimental pilot issue of Meme Insider, with a small group of volunteer redditors.

“When the post started gaining traction and I realized I could turn this into an actual magazine,” he recalls, “I gathered some people who were interested and put together the ‘.5’ issue for Meme Insider, which was basically a test to see if people would actually read a magazine about memes.”

After a few weeks of work, Alex released what they’d come up with: a 25-page digital magazine with a cover story aptly titled “Shitposting Gone Too Far.”

Redditors who scanned through the test issue of Meme Insider found a surprisingly professional debut, with original interviews, quantitative and qualitative analyses of popular memes featuring Spongebob and Kermit the Frog, and an early discussion of NASDANQ, the nascent meme-trading site run by a number of redditors in r/MemeEconomy.

While the medium and content may have seemed at odds—a monthly magazine tracking memes, which change from minute to minute—Alex explains the editorial philosophy he took from the start of Meme Insider.

“We try to focus on overarching trends and big events rather than a listicle of the ‘Top 10 Memes of the Month’ sort of thing. Trying to be too topical is the best way to ensure that you end up falling behind the times.”

Thus, retrospective analyses took precedence over tips on new memes that could have become dated by the time the issue was released.

While the conception of the magazine may have been in jest, the content throughout is quite earnest, as the issue’s introductory letter from the Meme Insider staff makes clear:

“This magazine is the culmination of a group of strangers on the internet that took a joke too far and ended up here.”

BUY! BUY! BUY!

After the inaugural “0.5” issue received a similarly warm response from its core fanbase of meme economists, the volunteer staff grew and began turning their “joke too far” into a well-organized editorial force with interviews of more public figures, an improved design, and their very first advertisements (albeit fake ones).

“r/MemeEconomy is full of people who love the same things as we do, so finding Meme Insider team members was pretty easy,” Alex explains. “With the help of the amazing r/MemeEconomy staff members, we stickied a call for applications which received tons of support.

“The staff over at Meme Insider are the sole reason we are still running. Without them, no issue would ever get finished and we wouldn’t be here right now. I can’t thank them enough!”

Despite working across time zones and busy schedules—coordinating on Slack, e-mail, and Reddit in their free time—the volunteer staff has leveled up the scope of Meme Insider with each issue.

In January, they interviewed red-sweatered redditor and 2016 Presidential Election meme Ken Bone and ran their first ad for another Reddit community, fellow meme subreddit r/WholesomeMemes. In February, they launched a Patreon page and received their first major press shoutout from Motherboard. In March, they interviewed popular vlogger Anthony Fantano, creator of The Needle Drop, and released the first print issues of Meme Insider. Their team at the time, now 39 strong, included lead designer u/CartoonWarp, executive marketer u/Noerdy (one of the original mods of r/MemeEconomy and r/WholesomeMemes), and an impressive list of developers, designers, marketers, and writers.

“Other than really small details here and there, everyone seems to be on the same page when it comes to what direction the magazine should take,” Alex says. “I think that stems from the fact that our whole team was browsing and following the Meme Economy independently before coming together as a group. We all seem to get it.”

The staff also has to be comfortable with a certain amount of uncertainty regarding what the next issue will bring. Volunteers, many of whom are occupied with school and full-time jobs, come and go, as do the memes they write about.

“The only trend we see month to month is the lack of a single identifiable trend,” Alex writes. “That’s the great thing about memes. You never know where the next big one will come from. It’s why you need people like us tracking this stuff.”

As Meme Insider continues to grow its number of patrons, readers, and contributors, the core staff still has ambitious goals for the future of their magazine—including a podcast, video pieces, and maybe one day “real ads.”

In the meantime, you can check out their Patreon for print copies of the magazine, their website for digital copies of all past issues, and this form if you’d like to contribute to the next issue.

Our thanks to u/DigitalizedOrange, u/Noerdy, and u/CartoonWarp for chatting with us.